Second Chances
by IWillGiveYouWhatYouNeed
Summary: When Chance proves to be unworthy to lead the League of Shadows, Bane returns to Gotham in search for the true heir: a straight arrow captain of the Major Crimes Unit who harbors a three-year-old grudge against him. Bane x OC. Rated M for explicit scenes. Sequel to City in Pieces II
1. A Forgotten Love

Second Chances

Chapter One: A Forgotten Love

From Gotham, the plane left the city with a narrow escape. The city had barely survived, especially after six months under the dictation of the League of the Shadows leaders, Talia, Bane, and Lieutenant Chance Bremly. While the city thrived, due to Batman's rescue of the decrepit seat of crime, the League of Shadows was slowly depleting. While Bane and Chance had escaped successfully, it was not for the benefits of the plan that should have been completed during the full out war that had taken place in the city streets.

Chance had purposefully disobeyed the rules in which she should have followed: to allow Bane to die in the city as was arranged. Instead, she broke ranks and rescued her lover from the city that should have exploded from a secreted time bomb in the middle of Gotham. However, Gordon and Batman's efforts had prevailed, and now all that was left was a tension between Chance and Bane.

Both had left the terrain with battle scars and wounded limbs. No one else had made it out alive from Gotham; and those who had were arrested and sent to Arkham Asylum for obstruction of justice or worse.

What should have been a look of gratitude and endearment for saving his life, Bane glared at Chance with undeniable anger and disappointment as she tended to his wounds from when Catwoman had blasted him off his feet with a Batpod missile launcher. While her blood-dried hands cradled his bleeding abdomen in bandages and wrappings, his dark eyes bore through her puffy red ones.

"I know..." she muttered quietly. "I know that I disobeyed."

"You did more than that, Chance," his voice echoed through the small tubes of his mask. When she didn't meet his eyes, Bane lunged forward and swatted at her nimble fingers away from his stomach. The hurt in her face was self-evident when she looked at him irritably. "You broke ranks and rescued me from a city that should have been burned to the ground. You did what I told you _never _to do."

"I saved your life as you had always saved mine," retorted Chance, straightening. "You should be thanking me."

"Once more, you believe that the League of Shadows takes care of its own." Bane muttered in disgust. "We are not a family of outcasts and miscreants, Lieutenant. We never have been. You seem to have forgotten that."

Chance scoffed and turned away from him. She crossed the landing to sit back down in the pilot's seat. Her eyes cascaded over the horizon as the sun began to set. Bane's footsteps followed hers. They both looked like their lives had been shattered, and they had. His eyes blazed with disapproval as she stared out into the sky, a mark of self-loathing on her face.

"You miscarried," Bane remarked.

"Yes." Chance said gently. Her hands came across the blood-soaked area on her stomach. "I did."

"Then I must try again." Bane muttered.

"How could you think of sex at a time like this?"

Bane shook his head.

"No, you misunderstood me."

His voice declined from anger to humble sorrow. Chance looked at him, confused.

"What are you talking about?"

Bane sighed, the soft echo reiterated through his mask. His eyes glanced at hers. Chance met them with equal sadness.

"You broke ranks. You didn't obey the plan. You..." said Bane softly. "I know that you have been loyal to the League of Shadows for years, and it hasn't been for naught. However, as grateful as I should be for your efforts in Gotham, I must tell you that you cannot be a part of the League of Shadows anymore."

"I'm the leader of the League of Shadows; you said so yourself, Bane. _I_ am..."

Bane shook his head, a look of duty and purpose upon his handsome features.

"You were."

Horror-struck, Chance stared at him as if the rug had been swept from under her feet.

"But you love me...I know that you love me..." she whispered. "How can you dispose of me if you still have something for me...?"

"You must always learn what is necessary." Bane muttered, as if he was reciting to himself the legacy of Ra's Al Ghul. "It is our code, and everyone must abide by those rules. Without them, the League of Shadows ceases to exist. Everything that Talia's father has created is for nothing; and Talia and Ra's Al Ghul's lives have been in vain. What _we_ have done will be in vain. So..." he looked at her with more sad and final gaze, what looked to be of remorse, "I must make sure that no one knows that you have been ex-communicated."

"You're banning me." Chance remarked, heart-broken. "You know how that feels."

"Then," said Bane, "I will have to force your non-existence if you choose not to go willingly."

"We're in a plane." Chance said lightly, her voice shaking from anxiety.

"As you have seen in the past, that doesn't stop me."

Chance sighed shakily. She closed her eyes. Bane reached across her and pulled a silver dagger from her waist. Before he could do what was finally necessary, he saw tears stream from her closed eye lids. Then he turned away and plunged the silver dagger forward.

Not even a gasp or a small cry had echoed from the plane.

Bane looked upon the corpse of his beloved, one whom he would have died for in the midst of battle. His eyes fell upon her body once more. Bane bent forward and hoisted her body into his arms.

Regrettably, he scorned himself for being a servant to the League of Shadows. He opened the hatch to the plane's exterior. A gust of wind met him almost instantly. Through the battering door, he ceremoniously tossed Chance's corpse out of the plane. His eyes watched her body dive through the clouds and then disappear toward the ground. Bane sighed sadly and closed the door.

A legacy was nothing without a successor. He would have to start the journey all over again to find a suitable leader.

There was only one place that was full of people who wanted to begin anew from a life of crime. In a few years, he would return to Gotham after it was fully restored by Batman.

There, he would find the true leader of the League of Shadows.


	2. Captain Pepper Hill

Second Chances

Chapter Two: Captain Pepper Hill

"I'm going out for coffee. Do you want anything, Pepper?" Ramirez passively asked as she rounded the corner of the office of the Major Crimes Unit department.

"Pepper?"

When she didn't hear a response, the dark-haired officer peeked her head through the door to see the captain of the Major Crimes Unit Third Shift was resting at her desk, her head face forward on a stack of papers labeled _Classified_.

Ramirez stepped forward into the room. Approaching Captain Hill, she withdrew her hands from the pockets of her uniform and rapped her knuckles on the corner of her desk. She smiled when Pepper, a thin woman with straight black hair and dark eyes, erected with a shocked look on her face and a small, fleeting glimpse of panic.

"Hey, Pepper," she said casually, "I'm going out; did you want anything from Trader Joe's?"

Captain Pepper Hill, rounding thirty with a youthful face, looked at the standing officer with a sweeping glance of mild confusion. She looked at her desk, perplexed, then rubbed her eyes tiredly, attempting to figure out what the hell she had been doing before Ramirez awoke her from a highly recommended slumber. Ramirez pulled up a chair from the side of the room and leaned forward on the desk, folding her arms in front of her.

"What's up?" she asked.

"Oh...I guess I dozed off." Pepper muttered, leaning back in her swivel chair. "I was out on a jump squad this morning...Guess my sleeping habits have caught up to me."

"Oh, yeah? What's the problem in Gotham these days? Another clown causing trouble? Some hacked-up psychiatrist injecting drugs? Oh, and my personal favorite: crocodiles in the sewers..." Ramirez listed with a joking tone, but when Pepper's expressions didn't relax, Ramirez tightened slightly. "Sorry, I was hoping to make you smile today."

"These are very serious people, Anne," said Pepper, not a crack of a smirk on her face. "Considering that you and I were the bunt of those _jokes,_" she emphasized callously, "_I_ figured that you would at least be semi-serious about all this."

Ramirez made a noise of discomfort.

"Sorry," she muttered.

"At any rate," Pepper continued, dismissing her comrade's apology, "I suppose that the mob bosses might be postponing their drug ring trade-off for a few months. This morning, the commissioner and I found a few drug dealers from Falcone's family trying to smuggle in more of Crane's toxin from the mountains. The crime lords might stop their antics, but I'm certain that the higher profiles will continue to make Gotham a more dangerous place to live in as long as they are alive."

"Higher profiles like Joker?"

"Or Bane," specified Pepper with a malnourished grudge.

Ramirez looked upon the vengeful captain with some unease. It had been three years since Bane had held Gotham for ransom, when he had imprisoned all the law enforcement under the city for half a year. While others had attempted to forget that it had ever happened, justice-yielding and law-abiding Captain Pepper Hill still held a terrible grudge toward all those who had accompanied Bane in his takeover. Ramirez recommended many times that nobody would have ever guessed what Bane had been trying to do, but Pepper's conspiracy theories were still hard as ever: she believed that he was not a simple crook like the late Daggett had been. Bane was something to be afraid of, and he wasn't after or money or power. He was like a counterpart to Joker.

While the Joker wanted to terrorize Gotham, to see it plunder into chaos, Bane wanted to see Gotham burn to ruins: to become non-existent.

Pepper's hatred for criminals wasn't something to be toyed with, and her sense of humor of such things was extremely dry. In her eyes, anybody who tried to hurt anybody else was a criminal. Her heart hungered for purity; but Ramirez believed that trying to make Gotham a seat of safety was highly improbable. Purity meant that it would take several death penalties to eliminate criminals like Ace, a woman by no other name whom still swarmed the streets with blood and brutality. Ramirez knew that it would never happen; mainly, and this was a huge portion of the reason standing, was that Pepper was not a killer.

"I know what happened to us was horrific, even mind-numbing," said Ramirez gently, "down in Gotham. But all of us, even Gordon, have looked past it."

"I wasn't stuck under Gotham, Anne," said Pepper coldly. "Remember? I was the few who were outside, watching the city get ransacked by people like you..."

Ramirez bit her lip accordingly.

Despite her place, Ramirez knew that Pepper's tolerance for criminals was not biased. Pepper had learned that Ramirez was partially responsible for the death of Rachel Dawes and what had become of Harvey Dent. In Pepper's eyes, Ramirez was just as irresponsible as Joker. What made Pepper tolerate Ramirez who remained on the force was Gordon's admission: Ramirez had been forced to do what she had done out of the safety of her mother whose life was in the hospital during Joker's reign of terror.

"You helped Gotham become safe again," Ramirez said. "You and Gordon got rid of Bane and all of them. Is it enough to know that you stopped Gotham from lighting up in a mushroom cloud?"

"It's never enough," muttered Pepper darkly.

She reached for a television remote and clicked on the TV that was mounted ahead of the door frame. Ramirez turned her head to watch the screen fade in from black. The news reporter spoke of today's crime rates. Ramirez glanced warily at the TV when two familiar faces popped up.

Ace and Joker's crime sprees had started up again.

The news reporter, Ms. Sandra Dee, relayed the update of Gotham's corrupted system,

"_Today is the sad day of what used to be known as Thanksgiving, a time of happiness and family-oriented fun. However, the prince and princess of crime, Ace and Joker, have terminated the love and courtship of such a happy holiday to one that is bloody and untimely. Today, several families have lost their loved ones to a massacre that took place here, in Gotham's Square, during the traditional show of the Pilgrim Parade."_

Pepper looked up at the screen to see that Ace's antics had improved and that her horror had perfected a gory display of cruelty and a love of torture and carnage. Bodies lined the streets while families grieved over them. Some were trying to identify their sons and daughters, as the faces were too gruesome to recognize through the blood and torn skin. Pepper's face reddened in anger.

"_While the last reign of terror had passed us since three years ago, since Bane and his League of Assassins had governed our city, it is now that we must fear those who have no purpose but to frighten the souls of those who still try to hold true to our city. Gotham's policemen and Gordon's Major Crime Unit are trying to find the hide-out of Joker and Ace, but we doubt that they will reach them in time before more blood is shed on this tragic holiday."_

Pepper turned off the TV, wearing a look of dismay and fury.

"_There_," she said hotly. "Is that what you call 'safe', Ramirez?"

Ramirez frowned.

"The world is wicked and cruel, Pepper. You can't expect to rid the world of every evil that comes into Gotham."

"I haven't given up hope," said Pepper irritably. "Maybe if you still had some left, you wouldn't be so apathetic about it."

Ramirez sighed in defeat.

"Fine. I'm going out to eat. You want anything?"

"I'll take that coffee," muttered Pepper tiredly. She returned her attention to the folders on her desk. "Be careful out there. The world is full of criminals."

"Nobody knows that better than you, I guess..." said Ramirez quietly before departing.

Pepper flipped the folder labeled _Classified_ and gaze at the prolific photograph of the masked man known as Bane.

Her words reflected anger and frustration,

"_Where are you?"_


	3. A Fatal Flaw

Second Chances

Chapter Three: A Fatal Flaw

Pepper's crass behavior among her uniformed officers handed her the reputation of being one of stereotypical policewomen who had something to prove. Her sense of humor had been dried to a tasteless crisp to the point where no subject was amusing, no matter how light. Pepper and Ramirez would have been great friends if Anne Ramirez's name had not shown up on the clearance list of those who have had a corrupt jacket. While Gordon's faith in the Hispanic beauty had seemed to have renewed over the recovering three years post-Bane crisis, Pepper's faith was left in the past. Even for the ones who had eventually stood up against the corrupt, people like Officer Foley, were—in Pepper's eyes—cowards for not immediately joining the ranks beside Gordon to save their city.

Needless to say, though it was worth saying, Pepper stood alone in the room full of happy-go-lucky policemen who cut up and laughed at a few jokes by the water cooler. While others were having a rendezvous in the small cafeteria of the precinct, Pepper took her breaks and lunches in her office with the door closed and the blinds pulled. While her dedication and passion for justice was admirable, many strongly considered to be a very high-strung weak link in the chain of a _fair_ justice system. Anybody who was anybody that created a crime was a criminal, no matter the circumstance or situation or anybody involved. If Gordon committed a crime out of the responsibility of saving his children and wife, Pepper would have him tried before a judgmental jury and have him jailed.

Pepper's experience with Bane had hardened her very core. She was almost always angry if she wasn't cynical. She was athletic, toned, and strictly charismatic; but empathy and compassion had turned to stone over the course of the six months that she had to wait in hiding to avoid being caught by Bane's mercenaries, and his beloved Lieutenant, the one known to the other criminals as Chance Bremly.

Pepper's noted experience with super villains was extensive. Her place in the precinct as a captain of the Major Crimes Unit was a particular badge, a certification that spoke to anyone that she was more than competent to understand the validity of a villain's reasoning for taking over Gotham. Her main targets were Chance, Ace Leswaae, and Bane; however, Chance and Bane had escaped via a stolen aircraft during the take down of Gotham, and thus were never seen again. Ace and Joker were still at large, and their killing spree had begun again. Pepper's study of Chance was that any time that Chance was absent for a long period of time, it was a meaning that she was planning something horrible. The first time, it had been Jonathan Crane and Ra's Al Ghul unleashing fear toxin into the city. The second time had been Joker and Ace's debut, introducing the definition of a good time into Gotham by diving the city into complete chaos. Then the third had been Gotham's near annihilation. Pepper's growing frustration peaked in the night when she thought of the many places that Chance could be.

The first few times, she had been _right_ under the Commissioner's nose. She was right. He wouldn't listen to her, though. Nobody would.

Angry, sultry, beautiful, and eroded by years of hate and desensitizing, Captain Pepper Hill was well-known to be almost paranoid—due to the evidence that almost every single super villain managed to drop out of her hands when possible. While she didn't believe in coincidence, conspiracy was always in the back of her mind. That's why she was reviled when she learned about Ramirez's betrayal.

Pepper Hill was damaged by all meaning of the word. Her job was just too important to her to give it up.

This was her fatal flaw.


	4. What Is Right and What Is Easy

Second Chances

Chapter Four: What is Right and What is Easy

Commissioner Gordon re-watched the news cast from the day before, noting to himself the several hints that were Ace and Joker's signatures for creating havoc. He knew that the obstruction of order had no rhyme or reason: attacking a few pedestrians and breaking into a local joke shop along with delivering a massacre in town square had no appropriate reasoning. Gordon watched the video recording on his office television. The two familiar faces of Joker and his wild hench wench appeared before the camera, wielding semi-automatic machines guns and throwing knives across the street. Each criminal held a look of amusement: neither held a sense of remorse or self-loathing.

When Gordon turned to reach for his coffee behind him, he was slightly taken aback to find the gaze of a dark-eyed captain glowering at the television set with the absolute hatred of a thousand suns. Gordon, sensing the tension in the room, muted the TV.

"I think that it might do you good to take a few days off," suggested Gordon after a filling long silence. "This isn't healthy for you...obsessing over this crime-fighting."

"All my crime-fighting is legal and quantified: no lawyer will try me as a vigilante...no matter _how_ brave _he_ is..." Pepper remarked stealthily, nodding up to the television.

Gordon turned his head to see the heroic figure of Gotham's Dark Knight, Batman, taking a stand against Ace and Joker by thwarting their grotesque escapades. He smiled at the Batman's proactive actions. The law had no jurisdiction over Batman. He was an unsung hero. And he managed to fight death. He had returned a little over a few months ago after Bane's terrorist attack on Gotham. Gotham still needed a Batman. Gordon still needed Batman.

When Gordon looked back at his Captain, her gaze smoldered.

"I can't believe that you would back this man," she said, visibly upset. "Then again, you declared the former Dent Act over a man who destroyed lives...How could this surprise me any further?"

"My hands are clean now." Gordon said calmly. "There are exceptions to justice. There are those who deserve it and those who can reserve redemption by fighting crime."

"Wrong on both accounts..." Pepper stated coldly. "There is no gray area when it comes to breaking the law. You should know that."

"I _am_ the law." Gordon said irritably. He steadily grew agitated with Pepper's self-righteous stand against his authority. "What is right and what is wrong are different things, very different things.

"_Pffft..."_ Pepper uttered a scathing noise. "There is a difference between what is right and what is easy; and you do neither. Thank you for the offer; but I think that I'll continue to run my shift as ordered, Commissioner."

With that, she turned on her right heel and walked out, slamming his office door in finality.

Gordon sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose under his glasses.


End file.
